--- title: Optimizing AI Agents with Progressive Disclosure | daily.dev description: AI coding agents waste precious context window space when given too much information upfront. Applying the Progressive Disclosure principle — revealing... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-ai-agents-with-progressive-disclosure-08e6i3xpw twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: Optimizing AI Agents with Progressive Disclosure | daily.dev og:description: AI coding agents waste precious context window space when given too much information upfront. Applying the Progressive Disclosure principle — revealing... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-ai-agents-with-progressive-disclosure-08e6i3xpw og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/08E6i3XPW.png og:image:alt: Optimizing AI Agents with Progressive Disclosure og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # Optimizing AI Agents with Progressive Disclosure **[Ardalis](https://daily.dev/sources/ardalis)** · 6 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary AI coding agents waste precious context window space when given too much information upfront. Applying the Progressive Disclosure principle — revealing complexity incrementally — to agent design means keeping AGENTS.md and CLAUDE.md files minimal (like a table of contents), writing skill descriptions as short selectors rather than full manuals, and using file references so agents fetch detail only when needed. The same discipline applies to MCP server tool descriptions. The result is a higher signal-to-noise ratio in the context window, leading to better agent responses. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Agent Skills: Progressive Disclosure as a System Design Pattern](https://daily.dev/posts/agent-skills-progressive-disclosure-as-a-system-design-pattern-nanbjcqsc) · SwirlAI · 24 upvotes · 2 comments --- Tags: [#ai-agents](https://daily.dev/tags/ai-agents), [#mcp](https://daily.dev/tags/mcp), [#prompt-engineering](https://daily.dev/tags/prompt-engineering) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-ai-agents-with-progressive-disclosure-08e6i3xpw) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"Optimizing AI Agents with Progressive Disclosure","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-ai-agents-with-progressive-disclosure-08e6i3xpw","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/optimizing-ai-agents-with-progressive-disclosure-08e6i3xpw"},"datePublished":"2026-04-17T17:08:11.024Z","dateModified":"2026-04-17T17:08:35.671Z","description":"AI coding agents waste precious context window space when given too much information upfront. 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